From Jakku With Love
by Artemis1000
Summary: Knight of Ren Rey has been given her first real mission: Kill Finn, the Senator of Onderon, before he can lead his planet back into the New Republic. A masked assassin breaking into his apartment isn't that unusual for Finn, but he sure as hell didn't count on falling head over heels in love with her.


Summary: Knight of Ren Rey has been given her first real mission: Kill Finn, the Senator of Onderon, before he can lead his planet back into the New Republic. A masked assassin breaking into his apartment isn't that unusual for Finn, but he sure as hell didn't count on falling head over heels in love with her.

Notes: Here is my contribution to Season of Finn.  
I never expected to find myself writing an AU like this one - or having so much fun with it! All the blame for this fic goes to this writing prompt asking for an assassin who can't kill their target.  
I picked Onderon at random, it was the first planet that came to mind, but now I feel that its long history of being torn between the sides and rebellion makes it a good match. Since the senatorial position seems to be hereditary on Onderon in the Prequels-era, Finn might or might not be a Bonteri.

I've got a vague alternate TFA timeline figured out, but all you need to know for this story is that Rey said yes to Kylo Ren - but she said yes to an end of her loneliness, not so much to the Dark Side. Without Finn, she never met her first friend, or the ones that followed. Without him, nobody ever came back for her.

 **From Jakku With Love**

These days it wasn't unusual for Finn to be woken up in the middle of the night.

It was more unusual that he didn't wake up to blaster fire, or his guards frantically shaking him awake and screaming that they had to get him out of here, _right now_.

Such was life when your planet rebelled against the First Order's stranglehold, and you were the most vocal voice seeking to lead it back into the safety of the New Republic.

Tonight, there was nothing but darkness greeting him, the only illumination provided by the occasional speeder zooming by his window and the three moons over Ryloth. He could make out nothing but shadows in the unfamiliar surroundings of his senatorial guest quarters.

Finn didn't necessarily consider the silence a good thing.

He tried to calm his racing heart, or at least his breath, and stared intently at the ceiling though there was nothing to see.

A faint rustle from the darker shadows by the door drew his attention, and Finn's breath hitched despite his best efforts. He didn't dare turn his head, but when he cautiously peered in that direction there was nothing to see but pitch-black.

"Don't bother," a voice from the shadows whispered, "I know you aren't asleep."

He gulped. "And… I'm not dead?" He winced, hating how that had come out as a question. It hadn't been intended as a question. Well, he was pretty sure it wasn't one.

Despite it being far too dark, he tried to squint anyway. The voice didn't tell him anything. It was distorted, he couldn't even tell the gender for sure, though if he had to guess he would say it was a woman's voice.

Like Slip said…

He sat up abruptly. "My guards! Did you kill my guards?!" Why hadn't he thought of that sooner? Kriff, he had to get out a call for help somehow, it'd be too late for him, but maybe some of the guards could be saved.

The assassin, for that was what she had to be, nobody broke and entered for a social visit, remained silent for an agonizingly long time. "You worry more for them than for yourself," she noted sternly. He couldn't tell if she approved or not.

Finn looked into the darkness, and tried to pretend he was looking right into her eyes. "Of course. You're going to kill me either way, but if I've got to die I'd rather die knowing whether any of my friends survived." Not that he actually planned to just lay down and wait for death to take him, but while she was talking she wasn't killing. Finn was all for not killing.

There was another long silence. "You're nothing like I expected," the assassin said, and Finn could have sworn she was frowning.

She stepped into a beam of pale moonlight, finally permitting Finn his first good look at his nighttime visitor.

She wore flowing black robes and a cowl, under which he could make out… the glint of a mask?

Finn's heart plummeted. "So they finally sent a Knight of Ren."

He had only seen one of them once, when Kylo Ren came to _speak_ to the king, but that was the kind of encounter you never forgot, if you survived it.

The assassin tilted her head. She reminded him of a curious cat, maybe she was toying with her prey like one. "Are you scared?"

Yes, Finn wanted to scream, but then he thought about it, and… He clutched the covers like a lifeline. Nothing made sense tonight. "Should I be?" Well. Dumb question. "I mean, of course I know I should be scared, and I am scared, you're a Knight of Ren and you're here to kill me and you still haven't told me if you killed my guards but if you wanted to kill me you could have done it already and I don't know…" Once again, his heart stuttered with a new realization. "Are you here to kidnap me?"

"No." This time, she didn't hesitate to answer. "And your guards are fine. I made them sleep." She raised her hand for a weird gesture; Finn assumed it should have meaning to him but it didn't. He knew nothing about Force users, other than to avoid them.

Good. Slip, Zeroes, Nines and the others would be fine. Finn felt a little bit of his tension dissipate. Whatever plans she had for him, at least nobody else had to die for him this time. He was so tired of people dying to save him, he had never wanted to be that kind of politician.

For a while they remained silent, Finn on the bed and the woman standing in the middle of the room, both of them motionless. He was hyperaware of the blaster hidden under his bed, and how thoroughly out of his reach it was.

She broke the silence first, though she remained eerily still. "I was sent to kill you."

What were you supposed to say to that?

"I have been watching you since you landed on Ryloth. There have been four attempts on your life since you arrived."

That was… Finn blinked. His heart rate was picking up again. He felt sweat bead on his forehead. No matter how hard he tried to tell himself that he would face death bravely, the reality of the situation was sinking in now. Every other attempt on his life had happened so fast, there was no time to get properly scared. "I was attacked three times."

"Yes."

Finn really wished he could see her face. "Thank you?"

"I didn't do it for you!" the assassin snapped. She yanked off her helmet, the cowl falling back in the process, and revealed a strikingly young face with glaring, hard eyes. He'd heard evil Jedi had yellow eyes, but hers were hazel. They didn't look evil, just angry. "He would have succeeded. And you are mine to kill."

For one madcap moment Finn thought that she was really beautiful for looking so murderous, then he remembered the murderous part.

"Uh…?" He really, really didn't know what to say to that.

A cylinder rose from the woman's belt, landing in her gloved hand. Twin red blades extended from the hilt. The room was bathed in light and shadow as she twirled it once, twice.

Finn could feel his heartbeat echo in his ears. The blaster. He had to get to the blaster…

Her lightsaber stilled. "You have to die. Onderon can't be allowed to break away."

"Can't we?" Finn asked, his own voice turning harder now, more angry than afraid in a way. He didn't know how to small talk with assassins, but he had a lot to say about Onderon. "We still remember Steela Gerrera dying to free us from Separatist control all these years ago," he said, chin raising up stubbornly. "Lux Bonteri tried to bring us back into the Republic but he never got to finish the negotiations before the Empire came. Saw Gerrera picked up arms against it. We've been fighting off tyrants for generations, and I'm not saying we aren't tired of fighting, but I'm not going to stop when we're so close." He shrugged unhappily. "Unless you kill me, of course, but someone else will pick up where I left off."

She took two steps towards him, and oh, she looked so angry now, Finn could read the tension in every line of her body. "You think you can defy Supreme Leader Snoke? You think you can stand against the might of the First Order unpunished?" Another step towards him. "The Dark Side is too strong. _Nobody_ can stand against it."

"That's what I used to think, too," Finn admitted as he backed into the headrest. The cold metal dug into his back. "I wanted to do nothing but run. I wanted to run to the very ends of the galaxy to escape the First Order. I was lucky, you know, so many children were stolen for the Stormtrooper program… But then the troops came and I watched so many of my friends die to Stormtroopers who might have been born on Onderon, too, just brainwashed to forget everything but their obedience to the First Order."

Despite the grimness of his situation, Finn couldn't help smiling as he remembered a certain fateful meeting. "And then I ran into a pilot who told me the Resistance wouldn't be intimidated."

The assassin still looked kind of angry, but Finn could have sworn he read sadness in her eyes. "He lied. The Resistance will burn like the Hosnian system did."

"I doubt it, since Starkiller was destroyed." This time there was definitely a response. A widening of her eyes, a twitch as if she had to struggle not to flinch. Finn didn't know what to make of that, but he'd always preferred to fight with words than blasters, and after all he was still alive. "Starkiller was wrong," he insisted, "nobody should have the power to kill entire _planets_. But that's what the First Order does. It destroys everything it can't control." He let a heartbeat pass. "But people can't be controlled forever. We are no mindless drones." And neither was she, he tried to say with his eyes, but he didn't dare say it out loud. If he pushed too far, too fast…

"I know!" she snapped. "I'm not a drone." She sounded sullen to Finn's ears.

The Knight got closer yet, she was standing right by Finn's bedside now. She was younger than he had realized, maybe even a couple of years younger than himself. He wondered if the Knights of Ren were like Stormtroopers, stolen in childhood and conditioned to obedience, but he didn't think he would ever know.

"Do you have a name?" It was a genuine question. He had heard rumors that Stormtroopers were stripped even of their names.

Her scowl deepened again. It looked all the fiercer in the red light of her double-bladed saber. "It's Rey."

He almost smiled. "Rey Ren." If he had met her under better circumstances, maybe Finn would have thought of some clever remark about a pretty name… Well, no, he wouldn't, he would only ever be able to think of something awkward and clumsy.

"Just Rey. I won't be a Knight till I have killed you."

See? Awkward. He was so good at awkward. "Sorry," Finn mumbled.

This was probably Rey's cue to kill him, but she just kept looking at him so intently, and for the life of him Finn couldn't have said what was running through her mind. He really hoped it wasn't how to best kill him without making a mess. She was too close; he wouldn't be able to reach for the blaster before she had struck him down.

Finn didn't know what to say or do either. He had never been so close to someone who wanted to kill him.

"So… uh… do you like Ryloth?" he finally asked, just because the silence was becoming oppressive, and he didn't want to wait for his death.

Rey looked confused for a moment, and Finn couldn't blame her. He bet this went against every rule in the murder victim handbook. "It's nice." She fell silent, he could read a struggle on her face. "But I like green worlds better. I spent all my life on Jakku, until Kylo found me."

Finn couldn't help smiling. "You would like Onderon. It's got a lot of green."

"I… I think I would." Her eyes flickered to her lightsaber. She looked pained. "But I have to kill you."

"Because you can't be a Knight if you don't."

"Yes!"

Finn kind of understood. It wasn't personal. It was just how it was. But that didn't mean he would accept it. Not for himself, and, he realized suddenly, not for her either. She hadn't killed the guards, but she'd told him his name, and he just couldn't think of her as a faceless villain.

She narrowed her eyes at him again. "I've been watching you. You are different than I expected."

She'd said so before, and this time, Finn couldn't help asking, "what did you expect?"

"A ruthless criminal. The First Order says the New Republic was built by thieves and traitors, and that you all live in squalor and filth while your people are yearning for order."

"But it isn't. The New Republic isn't perfect, but it lets people live their own lives. They don't steal children… or send out assassins if a world wants to leave."

"I get to live my own life," Rey insisted, but it sounded like a token protest to Finn. She thought for a moment. "I like plants, and flying. I draw when I have the time." She pressed her lips together. Her stance shifted, shoulders straightening. "But everything is secondary to the Dark Side. You have to kill the Light inside yourself to become powerful. That's what being a Force user is about, and I have the potential to be one of the strongest there has ever been."

Again with the killing. Finn really wished there could be less talk of killing. "Do you have a boyfriend?" he blurted out. Rey scowled, and some reckless about-to-die-anyway instinct made Finn go on. "A cute boyfriend? Or scary masked boyfriend, in your case?"

"No!" Rey squawked indignantly, and yes, that was a definite squawk, and maybe it was the light of her saber, but he could have sworn she was blushing and that was much better than killing talk, and actually really cute.

If he was honest with himself he would have to admit everything about her was pretty cute, even the way she kept giving him these death glares, just… Yeah. That killing talk. Less of that would be nice. No actual killing would be even better.

There was no noise, nothing Finn could hear anyway, but Rey tensed up, eyes fixed on the closed bedroom door. "I have to go," she said curtly, and dashed to the center of the bedroom where she had dropped her helmet.

It was back on her head before Finn could finish calling, "wait!" and long before he could realize that his killer running away was a good thing.

He barely had time for another yell of, "Rey!" right before she thrust her hand forward and the armored transparisteel floor-to-ceiling window of his bedroom exploded outwards. Rey dove through the shower of splinters into the night.

Finn leaped from the bed just as his bedroom door opened and security raced in, most of them going for the window while two held him back from running towards the giant hole in his bedroom.

"She jumped!" he yelped, trying to free himself from the burly guard who had his arms twisted behind his back, "you don't understand, she _jumped_!"

.

.

Later, when he had moved his pillows and blankets the couch in the living room, and his security didn't feel like tying him up anymore, Finn decided that Rey must have known what she was doing. She was, after all, a Sith. Or dark Jedi. Or whatever the Knights of Ren exactly were. He tried not to think too much about the fact that he'd been more scared _for_ her than he had been _of_ her.

"Oh, hey, Slip," Finn said weakly. When his friend looked up from the incoming security reports, Finn grinned sheepishly. "You'll never guess, but I kind of met a girl."

"Yeah, and she's gone. Security's trying to track her, but so far nothing." Slip snorted. "There's just something about you that sends girls running."

Finn rolled his eyes. Yeah, so he had been that awkward kid who had no other friends, but Slip didn't have to keep rubbing it in. "She'll be back," he said confidently. "She's still got to kill me."

And maybe that was just the adrenaline high of not-dying making him reckless, but he couldn't wait to see her again.

Slip gave him an incredulous look. "You're so weird, man."

 **The End**

I'm planning both a sequel and a Rey-centric prequel (maybe later on a Finn-centric prequel, I'm hoping Rogue One will give us canon on post-TCW Onderon.)


End file.
